Stare Decisis
by skyfare
Summary: post Frame. Complete
1. Chapter 1

**Spoilers for Frame, definitely, and probably others. T for language. What else? Oh, and BA eventually (I promise this time). Takes place right where Frame ended--I know it's been done before, but I wanted to write what I thought could have happened. And I don't own them or anything.**

"Let the decision stand"

_Chapter One_

Two officers come in and take Declan away, but Goren stays frozen at the interrogation table. Eames and Ross stay behind the glass, watching him.

"Should we go in?" Ross asks Eames, his voice floating down around her like a moth, or a gnat, something small and annoying she wants to swat away. But he is the captain, so she pulls her forehead off the glass and gives him a tight fake smile.

"I'll go."

"Tell him to take some time off. As long as he needs." Eames nods, but she's not really listening. "And tell him that I'm…sorry."

_Sorry_.

Right.

"Make sure he gets home okay," Ross directs, and she thinks well, _duh_, and then she nearly smiles because at 42 she sounds like the rebellious teenager she never was.

She leaves Ross standing by himself and knocks briefly on the interrogation door before slipping in. He hasn't moved, so once she gets in the doorway she doesn't, either. At first. He's pushed her away before, after all ("_Back off_").

But then he cuts his eyes over to her and holds her gaze, so she pushes herself forward off the door frame and goes over to him.

"Bobby."

He immediately looks away, but he doesn't flinch when she lays a hand on his shoulder.

"Let me take you home," she says softly. "Okay?"

A faint nod, nothing else. Once it is apparent that he isn't going to move of his own volition anytime soon, she takes his elbow and tugs until he stiffly stands.

"Ready?"

He doesn't move and she drops her hand, steeling herself for the inevitable withdrawal she's sure will follow.

His voice is quiet when he speaks, though, quieter than usual and sad, not angry or bitter. Lost, maybe. "I don't know. I guess so. What…what else is there, really?"

"Well, there's the park."

He stares at her not so much as if she's insane, but as if he's afraid he is. "I'm sorry? The _park_?"

"We could go for a walk."

"A walk," he repeats uncomprehendingly.

"People walk," she prods him.

"Right." He looks like he wants to laugh, but maybe he wants to cry. "Let's go for a _walk_."

The pass through the squad room takes so long Eames is surprised it's still daylight by the time they reach the elevator. It's not just Bobby's slow, jerky movement, it's all the eyes on them, coming to conclusions and recalling rumors and searching for any sign or reason why anyone would kill for one half of this duo, and any sign or reason why the other half of the duo hasn't run away screaming yet.

In the elevator, Goren leans back against the grip bar and stares at the buttons. Eames is the one who pushes 1 and hits the door close button so no one else can intrude on them. He's getting so old, she thinks suddenly. _Where did that come from_? But right now, with his gray hair and unshaven beard and achingly labored movements he could easily pass for ten years older than he actually is. There's really nothing she can say that doesn't sound ridiculous in her head, so she rests her hand on his back and hopes it's enough. Hopes it's not too much. She couldn't touch him when they were in the elevator earlier, right after he had found Frank dead in the street and the whole thing began to unravel, and not just because there were other people around. He had closed himself off then, to try and focus on the task at hand of finding his brother's killer.

And he had. They had. What's left? He needs something to hold on to, Eames thinks blindly. _Me_, she thinks. She takes his hand, dangling limply at his side, and presses it against her waist. "Hold on to me, Bobby," she murmurs, and she doesn't care that it sounds odd as soon as the words are out there in the open to be judged and parsed and carefully picked apart by him, because that's what he does. He picks away at things (_Joe's murder_) until he solves them and understands them and it's got to be exhausting, she thinks suddenly. He has to be so tired from all that mental effort devoted to other people's idiosyncrasies.

His fingers tighten imperceptibly around her waist and she gives him a faint smile. He closes his eyes. They don't move until the elevator doors open and they maneuver their way out into the parking lot and into the rain.

"Guess we can't go for a walk after all," Eames says. He hasn't let go of her yet, and although it's a small thing for them it feels huge, pressed up against her skin as it is. "It's raining."

"It is?" He looks up into the sky and reaches both hands straight up, palms to the clouds, like an overgrown five year old. "Mmmm."

Eames shepherds him into her car and the next thirty minutes are spent fighting traffic and in what is possibly sleep, for Bobby (_good_, she thinks, looking at the dark circles under his eyes), until he opens his eyes again and she can see that he hasn't slept for a very long time. He's just…numb, and as inexpressive as Goren could ever be.

"It's probably a good thing we couldn't go for a walk," she says at last when they pull into the parking lot. "You need to go to bed."

He closes his eyes again, and if she had to take a guess she'd wager that he is thinking of all the inevitable nightmares ahead for him, dreams where he finds Frank's body in the street (_eyes open blank and staring body stiff and lifeless black strips of thread from the autopsy stitched across chest_); dreams where he opens the styrofoam carton and finds not only Nicole's still bleeding heart but her head and fingers and various other body parts, mocking him with ghosts of voices and airless whispers; dreams where she herself, maybe, is back in Jo's or maybe Declan's uncaring hands now, being tortured and killed away where she can't be found and she can't protect herself.

"We can stop at a drugstore and get some sleeping pills," she offers, letting the car idle. "Knock you out for a while."

He shakes his head. "No. Thanks, though. I'll be all right." He gives her what she supposes he thinks is a farewell smile, and she smirks and turns the car off.

"I'm coming up with you."

"You don't have to.

"I'm too tired to drive back to my house," she lies, getting out of the car. "Plus, captain's orders."

"I won't tell," he says with something approaching bitterness. "Don't worry."

"Don't be an ass."

He glares at her and she glares right back. He is the first to break, dropping his eyes and shrugging his shoulders. "Whatever you want, Eames. Don't put yourself out on my account."

"Don't be so _maudlin_." She hits him in the arm, hard, but instead of getting mad at her and maybe showing some sign that he is still capable of processing emotions through all this numbness he just cringes and seems to collapse into himself even more. _Wrong tactic_, she thinks with a sudden streak of fear. "Bobby. Hey." She steps in front of him and puts her hands on his shoulders, leaning her weight into her hands a little so she'll fall if he moves away. "I want to stay, okay?"

He puts his hands on her waist (_okay_, she thinks. _Good_. And, _good_) but then he shifts her weight back to herself so she's still standing when he extracts himself from her hands and heads towards the door. She follows him, not letting herself feel the disappointment lurking around the edges, and they walk up the stairs in uncomfortable silence.

His apartment is dark, and quiet. Eames flicks the light above the stove on so they are bathed in a semi-circle of dusky light, but that only makes the rest of the darkness seem…extra-dark. Malevolent. As if it's searching for them.

Eames shakes her head to get rid of all these inane thoughts and turns to her still silent partner, who won't look at her.

"Do you want me to leave?" she asks him finally. "If I'm bothering you I can go."

"You're not bothering me." He runs his hand over his head harshly. "I don't know what I want."

"How about some sleep?" she suggests gently.

He doesn't answer but he doesn't protest, either, even when she pulls on the sleeve of his jacket and leads him to his even darker, even quieter, bedroom.

"Go to bed," she says, nodding towards it. "I'll be on the couch if you need me."

"I…do," he says softly, so softly.

Eames stops halfway out the door and turns back to him. "What? Do what?"

He shakes his head distractedly, shifting his weight from foot to foot like always, except now he is slower, leaden. "Nothing."

"Need me?" she asks gently. "You need me?" She looks at him, particularly at his eyes, which are watching her warily but bordering on desperation. He nods slightly. Slowly, very deliberately, she walks back over to him and pauses in front of him before wrapping her arms around his neck and whispering into his ear, "Then you've got me."

***

He shivers once and then can't stop shivering, so she tugs him down to the bed and lies down beside him under the covers. He is awkward, unsure: too many choices.

Side or back?

Touching or no?

Eyes open or closed?  
Cry or suck it up?

Drink?

Drink.

Yeah, maybe drink.

Eames?

Yeah, maybe Eames too.


	2. Chapter 2

_Chapter Two_

But he can't. Well, he _could_—he so easily could that he can feel it in his altered fingerprints—but he doesn't. Maybe he misinterpreted. Maybe this is what partners do, hug and comfort each other, and maybe it doesn't have to be—anything. It's not like he has a strong basis of other successful partnerships to go off of. Plus—they are partners, and there's the whole other issue of emotional entanglement, and…he catches himself thinking that he's not sure if he can handle it if he lets himself like her anymore than he already does (quite a lot, secretly).

So he rolls over on to his side, keeping his back to her, and he tries to sleep. Tries to let the shadows seeping in through the window and the soft breathing of Eames beside him sooth him so he can drift off. But he keeps picturing his brother under that sheet, that horrible surprised look in Frank's eyes, and then after he deliberately shuts that image out of his mind others flood in: the way Eames looked like she was going to be sick when he opened the box and found that heart, the look in Ross's eyes when he was yelling about his father, the terrible stiff way Rodgers held herself when he was overturning her autopsy tools. There's too many; he can close off his mind to some things but not his entire life.

He feels Eames lay her hand on his waist and he shudders, abruptly flipping the covers off and standing up so fast his head spins. "I can't sleep. I'm sorry. I'm—I'll be…" And then he stops, because he doesn't really have any idea what else he's going to do or where he's going to be. Couch? Bar? Rooftop?—ha, no. He doesn't dare tempt himself with that height, the long quiet ending of a final jump down.

Eames sits up and glances at the clock. Midnight. "Is it still raining?"

He checks, oddly grateful for the normalcy of the task. "No."

She slides out of bed, pushing her hair out of her face. "Then let's go for our walk, Bobby."

He stares at her.

"It'll help you sleep."

So they end up outside, not bothering to change out of their sweatpants and sleep clothes. The streets are emptier than during the day but still busy, packed with half-dressed clubbers and businessmen and women in suits, looking tired after a late night at the office. _Everyone_ looks tired, he thinks, surveying his city. Everyone's so busy running around, chasing down anything that could possibly add to the fulfillment of their life, until something happens (and something always happens) to make them stop. To make them slow down. To make them—

"_Relax_," Eames says beside him. She moves closer to him, tucks her arm through his. "I'm cold," she says by way of explanation.

He untangles his arm from hers, giving her a small smile when she warily pulls back, and he wraps his arm around her bare shoulders. "_Relax_," he says back.

"'Kay," she mutters, but she leans against him slightly.

"That's better."

She slips her arm around him and hangs on. He can feel her small frigid hand on his waist and he thinks suddenly that they must seem like just another couple taking a late night stroll, trying to stay warm.

"We can go back, if you're cold."

"I'm fine now."

They're both typically fast walkers, always in a hurry to get someplace, but now they're so encumbered (enthralled) by the other's body that they walk slowly, ambling along until they reach the park and sit down on a bench. He settles against her more fully, shifting so he can feel her legs against his and keeping his arm around her shoulders.

She leans back so she can see his face. "You doing all right?"

"Define all right."

"Still breathing?"

"Yeah."

"Then you're all right."

"Good to know." She smirks, her hand gently rubbing up and down his side. _Do partners do_ this? "This…this is so fucked, Eames."

"I know." The night passes on around them but they stay locked into each other for a long timeless stretch, feeling the warmth of each other's body, feeling the coldness of the night (of the night? Of the _world_).

"I think it's raining again," Eames says at one point, feeling something wet on her hand, but then she looks up and realizes that it's not rain but the tears dripping down off his face. "Oh," she says quietly, her fingers curling in on his waist. "_You're_ raining."

He bows his head to hers in response, leaning his forehead against the part in her hair and splaying his fingers out on her back, holding her loosely.

"It's okay," she says once, but her words sound so hollow that she doesn't say anything else afterwards, just wraps her other arm around him and holds on.

"I'm sorry," he breathes, his voice ragging and catching and threatening to rip apart completely. "For everything. I'm sorry, Eames. I'm so—I'm sorry."

"It's okay," she says again.

Silence, just his staggered, soft breathing and the sound of her fingers rubbing against his shirt.

Eventually he pulls away and scrubs at his face with his hands.

"Feel better?" Eames asks.

"No." He gives her a real smile though, pained and watery but a smile all the same, because even though everything's so screwed up now, even after the horrible rift between them after his suspension, she's still here. "But—thanks."

She nods slowly, tilting her head at him as his heart lurches painfully in his chest (_Eames_). "Think you can sleep now?"

"I can try."

She stands up and holds her hand out to him. "Then let's go."

He takes her hand. They walk back to his apartment and settle back into his bed, into the soft dark quietness of the night, into each other.

And he sleeps. Because of Eames. Because he has the absolute best partner in the world, in the galaxy, in time itself. Because although they're only loosely draped over each other he can feel her holding to him tighter than he's ever been held before.


	3. Chapter 3

_Chapter Three_

In the morning they wrap themselves in robes and have breakfast and talk. Not about fathers or mothers or brothers or nephews or crime or interrogation rooms. They talk about the comfortable past, cases they solved painlessly or unusually. That one Christmas party when Eames got drunk. Deakins. The first day of meeting each other, when the first time she saw him was when he was talking to a possible suspect and dancing around the room.

"What were you doing, anyway? I never asked."

He laughs softly. "I figured you were afraid to."

"I'm asking now, aren't I?"

"This guy owned a dance studio, and he was a wanna-be dancer we suspected of killing his business partner who actually taught the classes. He couldn't dance himself, though, and it was eating him up. I thought he might have killed his partner because his partner just got a gig for Carnegie Hall. I was trying to provoke him by dancing, by showing him what he couldn't do."

"Did it work?"

"Oh, he snapped all right, tried to attack me, but he hadn't killed his partner. His alibi checked out."

"He attacked you?"

"I was being an ass," he admits. "All that dancing."

"Damn graceful, though."  
"Thank you."

And when he saw her.

"You were so pissed when you spilled your coffee."

She snorts. "I was hoping you hadn't seen that."

"I didn't want to embarrass you, so I pretended I hadn't."

"Always the gentleman."

"Not really." He is quiet for a moment. "You looked so cute dabbing at your sweater with the napkin and trying to keep your hair out of your face that I was worried, for a minute, that you might not be able to handle this job."

"Boy, were you wrong."

"So wrong," he agrees. "I found out soon enough what you were capable of." He looks over at her, and she thinks that for the first time in a long time she sees the once-familiar gleam in his eyes. "You impressed me. Still do," he adds, almost as an afterthought.

Eames absorbs what he said but doesn't respond. "Remember our first case?"

"How could I forget? It was so horrible."

"The partnership or the case?"

"Case. The partnership was fantastic, I thought," he says. "We…clicked. Everything worked."

"Complimentary skills," she murmurs.

"But the murders were so gruesome—I don't think I've ever seen bodies ripped up like that before, or since. And there was so much pressure to find the serial killer, and Deakins was flipping out because his niece was nearly attacked that night and he thought it might have been the same person, and…it was a lot."

"We handled it, though."  
"We did."

They fall silent, both remembering the night they figured out who it was, the moment she made some comment and he latched on to it, talking circles around it until somehow between the two of them they came up with the idea of where his secret hiding/killing place might possibly have been. Two hours later they apprehended him with enough evidence for the death penalty.

"We're good together," she says quietly.

He nods, gives her a faint lingering smile. "Definitely."

She doesn't want to break the spell, the atmosphere, the _calmness_, but if she doesn't get moving she's going to be late. "So are you going to listen to Ross or are you coming in to work with me today?"

"I haven't decided yet."

"Clock's ticking," she murmurs, draining the last of her orange juice.

He leans forward and impulsively kisses her forehead, scraping his thumb along her jaw line and making her unwillingly shiver. "Since when have I ever listened to Ross?"

It takes a minute for her to pull her brain back and sort through the jumble of noise until she separates it into words.

"Thank you for everything," he whispers, standing up and slipping back into normalcy (_his _normalcy), where they don't touch and they don't sleep in the same bed and they definitely don't kiss. He stretches, wincing as his back cracks. "I'll be ready in a couple of minutes."

"Okay," she murmurs automatically, pulling the folds of his old robe around herself. "I hope I still have work clothes here."

"You do."

She tries to keep up the trip down memory lane as they're driving to work, but it feels forced and unnatural and so she lets it drop off into silence. Ross protests only moderately to Goren returning to work so quickly after—after, but Goren patiently dances around him with words until their captain gives in (gives up?) and sends them out into the streets to investigate yet another homicide.

They go through their routine (body sniffing suppositioning theory witness questioning thinking), but they both know it's sluggish. Forced. All their ideas turn out to be useless, if not staggeringly stupid (Bobby was convinced it was the clerk at a nearby store for one brief minute based on the fact that the kid had half a store receipt in his pocket, and she didn't disagree).

At one they head out to a nearby deli for lunch, where they end up mostly sucking down cup after cup of particularly weak coffee. "Maybe it _is _too soon for you to be back," Eames suggests gently, surveying him over her fifth cup. He looks terrible—heavily lidded eyes red and exhausted, dark circles under his eyes, gray tinge to his skin, face drawn—so she doesn't feel too badly about calling him out.

"What about you?" he shoots back. "I didn't see you having any brilliant ideas today, either."

She doesn't respond, and after a moment he crashes his head down into his hands and rubs his face. His hands are shaking, she notices. "Sorry. God. Maybe…you might be right. I just don't want to go back to my apartment and sit all day thinking about everything."

So they slog through the rest of the day, somehow, making next to no progress. Goren gets increasingly irritated as the day goes on and they get nowhere, and the afternoon culminates in him yelling at their one possible lead and Eames yelling at him for yelling at their lead. They stop speaking to each other sometime around three, and it's at six when Ross pops his fifth aspirin of the day (God, think of the damage to his liver) and orders them both to go home. Goren protests, of course, saying he intends to stay here and go through some papers, but when Ross threatens to give their case away he caves and storms off to the elevator, daring Eames with a glare to follow him.

_Don't worry, buddy_, she thinks, glaring right back. She intends to go home and take a bath, for once, instead of her usual quick sprint through a shower. After that she intends to get nicely drunk on either wine or screwdrivers (she hasn't decided yet; both are favorites) and go to bed. Or maybe she'll go to the gym, take out some of her anger and frustration on the weight machines. Or the treadmill. _Too many possibilities_, she thinks suddenly, harshly, blindingly.

But once she's at her house she discovers she can't do any of those wonderful activities because she's _lost her _fucking _key_. Correction: she has a damn good idea where her key is, once she thinks about it and remembers that loose little slip on her keychain she felt in the morning when she picked up her cell and her keys at Goren's house.

After a pronounced bout of cursing and hitting the dashboard (which does nothing to relieve her anger, just makes her hands numb and achy), she turns around and makes the hour drive back to Goren's apartment, fighting her way through traffic and lights and the steady drizzle that's begun to fall. It turns into a fucking downpour (naturally) by the time she reaches the parking lot of his apartment building.

Even the brief sprint from car to main door leaves her soaking wet and twice as furious as before. She storms through the lobby, dripping on the carpet, and pounds up the stairs, too mad at herself and Goren and circumstances to even begin to try to control her fury. She doesn't think he is going to answer at first when she knocks, even though she can see the light spilling out into the hallway from under the door, so she starts _banging_ on the fucking door, yelling his last name at the top of her lungs (if he can't use her first name then she won't either).

Goren rips open the door, glaring at her with a mixture of irritation and worry. "What the hell are you doing?"

She pushes past him without a word and begins staring intensely at the floor, searching for her key.

"Eames?"

She flips him off with both hands, feeling immature, but she's still so angry she can feel her heart pounding all the way through her legs.

"Alex."

"I lost my fucking key," she spits, stamping the floor and feeling like a three year old on the verge of a massive tantrum. "Can't get into my fucking house, can't escape the day, so I came back here—_in the rain_—to get it, and now it's fucking _disappeared_."

"I found your key on my bedroom floor and I put it on the table to give to you tomorrow. I thought you still had the spare key outside?"

"Got rid of it. After Jo. It didn't seem safe anymore." She snatches up her key and jams it in the pocket of her uncomfortably wet jacket, unable to look at him. "Sorry to bother you. I'll see you tomorrow." She's unbearably tired all of a sudden, not so much angry anymore but cold and wet and tired and is that _thunder_ that she's hearing that she'll have to drive back through?

Yep.

She tries to push past him through the door but he won't budge. "Can I please get through?" she asks none too nicely.

He places a hand on each of her arms, holding her still so he can look at her. "Why don't you sit down for a minute?"

"Don't you fucking _placate _me," she says, but she doesn't have the power of her anger anymore behind her words so she ends up sounding mostly tired. "I have to go."

She expects him to hold his hands up and move aside, his default backing off gesture, but he only tightens his grip on her. "I'm not trying to _placate _you; I'm trying to protect the other drivers from you right now. What happened? Why are you so angry?"

She feels his eyes boring into hers and she has to look away. "I told you. I lost my key here."

"And everyone says _I'm _the one with the anger issues," he murmurs, trying to get her to laugh, she thinks, but she doesn't. "Let me get you a drink."

She debates, but she's won over by the promise of alcohol. "Vodka. Straight."

"No orange juice?"

"Just give me the bottle," she grumbles, and after a second he does. She drinks straight from it, swallowing a long rolling mouthful that burns her throat and makes her eyes water. The twist in her stomach settles as the alcohol goes to work on her system, warming her.

"You're all wet."

"Way to put those masterful observation powers to good use, Goren."

"Okay, then how about this: You're not pissed just because you couldn't find your key but because it was a shitty, shitty day at work and I'm not pulling my weight right now in our partnership. You're also mad because there's me and all my problems and you don't know quite how to deal with them, because you don't know quite how to deal with me in general, except in the concept of our job, and that's temporarily gone to hell. And also I think, I could be wrong, but I think that you just want to really scream at someone, just let it all out and maybe punch some walls and sweep some things off of desks and give in to it like I do, but you won't let yourself because you have too much self-control, and you like having self-control, you think it's helped you deal with the aftermath of being kidnapped, but—"

"Stop it!" she shrieks suddenly, her fingers clutching convulsively around the neck of the bottle. He notices her hand and backs away from her, splaying his long pale fingers up against the air.

"Okay, okay."

"Just stop it," she snarls again, taking another rejuvenating drink. "God, Goren. I'm sorry I asked."

He lets it drop, until she tips the bottle back again. "Why don't you give me that back," he suggests, holding his hand out.

"I think I'll hold on to it a while longer."

He holds his hands up higher. "It's just that three shots in twenty seconds is a lot for anyone."

He might be right about that, she thinks dazedly. She can feel the alcohol flooding her system. She begins to set the bottle down but then pauses, reconsiders. Picks it up again and after one final drink whirls around and hurls the bottle at the door as hard as she can so it shivers into dozens of jagged pieces, splattering vodka over the door and the carpet and herself, a tiny bit.

She turns back around to find Goren grinning at her just a little despite the worry in his eyes. "It didn't help," she says finally.

"It usually doesn't."

She nods and turns back around, surveying the mess. "Do you have a…mop, or a dustpan or something?"

"I'll get it. Go take a shower, get out of your damp clothes."

"I don't think I have any more clothes here."

He gives her a jerky nod. "I'll get you a t-shirt."

Halfway through her shower, after a particularly loud crack of thunder, the power goes out. So she begins to laugh, uncontrollably, because she's drunk and naked in her partner's apartment—in his _shower_, no less—and now she can't even see the tap to turn off the water.

Someone's knocking on the door, a series of gentle staccato taps working their way into her brain. "Ye-ees?" she sings out, still laughing, tipping her face up so the water streams down over her eyes and her nose and her cheeks.

"I—uh, I brought you a candle," her partner calls uncomfortably from outside the door. "I'm just going to set it inside the door."

"Hang on a minute." She fumbles around until she finds the tap and turns it off. It feels like a major accomplishment so she decides to try for more, carefully stepping out of the shower and skidding only slightly on the tile.

"Eames?"

"I said _hang on a minute_." She traipses over to the door and flings it open, wide. His face is illuminated, the candle casting shadows up on to his face. She's grateful, because she's never quite seen this look on his face before.

"_Eames_!" His eyes are wide, traveling up and down her body, speedily at first but then slowly before settling on her face. "You—your—I, uh, Eames, I thought—"

"You're babbling." She reaches out and takes the candle from him but doesn't make any movement to close the door. He takes a step towards her, then reconsiders and takes two steps back.

"I'll, uh, I'll let you get _dressed_, then."

"Oh, that. Right." She looks down at herself, as if surprised by her nakedness. There's a muscle working in his jaw that she finds oddly fascinating, so she steps closer to him to examine it.

He leaps back and she rolls her eyes at him as another crack of thunder fills the silence. "Are you afraid of me?"

He shakes his head, his eyes leaving her face to roam over her body once more. "No. I'm afraid of _me_. Of…" He turns around suddenly, exhaling harshly. "I have to go, and you have to get dressed. Be careful with that candle."

He hurries away from her and after a moments drunken indecision (even though part of her is sober, more stone cold sober than she's ever been) she follows him, dripping more water on the carpet. "Are you all right?"

"No," he laughs, keeping his back to her. "No, I'm not. And you're drunk and you need to get dressed, and we won't ever mention this ever again, ever."

She's right behind him now, and she lays a hand on his shoulder. "Why?"

He shudders as if to turn around, but then he doesn't. "Because we don't _do_ this, Eames. _Please_, can you just go get dressed, and we'll go to bed—I'll be on the couch, you'll be in bed, dressed—and we'll wake up and the power will be back on and we'll be just—just partners, Eames. _Partners_," he emphasizes again. "Fully clothed partners who don't—anything."

She slips around him so she can face him and he's actually _shaking_, her 6'4 partner _shaking _when he looks at her. "_Eames_," he tries one last time. She cuts him off by planting her hands on his waist and sidling up so she's close, so close she can feel the crinkle of his shirt against her skin. He goes quiet, holding himself very still—holding his breath, even, Eames realizes when she leans in closer.

"Why aren't you breathing?"

"Why do you _think_?" He tries to back away but she throws her arms around his neck, locking him to her.

"Because of me?"

"Because of you," he agrees. "You have to let me go now."

"Shut up." He does. "I didn't know I had this…effect on you."

His hands land on her waist briefly, his fingers boiling hot before he rips his hands back away and twists his mouth up into a painful smile. "Come on. You—you had to at least _guess_ that I—"

"That you what?"

"I don't know! Liked you or whatever. I don't—" His breathing is getting ragged and he tries again to pull away from her. "I can't—what are you _doing_, Eames?"

"I don't quite know," she murmurs. "I guess I had to see." She leans against him and she sees, all right. Thinks with some regret that she didn't do this _ages _ago. His arms snap around her and he's kissing her suddenly, fiercely, but with a gentleness that surprises her. She lifts her hands to his face, sliding her fingers up his neck, over his evening stubble. She's drowning in the taste of him, the slight catch of his stubble against her chin, his warm lips on her just right so right always right. One two three _four _and he pulls away, swallowing audibly. He kissed her just to get her to loosen her chokehold, she realizes suddenly. She's suddenly extraordinarily grateful for the numbing sensation of the alcohol she's consumed (what a night—grateful for candles, alcohol—_Bobby_).

"Well, now you see." He rubs the back of his neck with his hand, turning away from her. "But I don't. You're—drunk, and your inhibitions are lowered, and you've had a frustrating day, and—we just can't do this now."

"Can we ever?" she wonders out loud.

He turns back around and she can see the pain in his eyes. "No. I don't know. We'll—I guess we're going to have to talk, about this—later, though, when we're both sober."

"And dressed," she adds. "Don't forget dressed."

"I don't think I'll ever be able to," he murmurs, giving her one last look before he goes into his bedroom and shuts the door. She takes her candle back into the bathroom and slips into his t-shirt, which reaches all the way down to her mid-thighs.

And although she's drunk she's not, really, not enough that she didn't know what she was doing, at any rate.

She leaves the bathroom and finds Bobby in the living room, sitting on the couch and watching the lightning scar the sky outside his windows. "You're such a fucking idiot," she says, sitting down beside him.

He looks at her and appears to be relieved that she's put on his t-shirt. "I know. Why?"

"_Because_," she says, leaning up against him so her head rests on his chest. "Because I would have been willing to—"

"Don't even say it, Eames." His arm goes around her and he begins playing with the fabric of her sleeve. "It's not fair to torture me like this."

"You think you were the only one being tortured?"

He shivers slightly and holds her closer. "Again, _not fair_."

***

They sit on his couch for a long time, watching the lightning play on outside his darkened window and listening to the thunder mumble until Eames falls asleep against him. He picks her up carefully and takes her to his bedroom, where he lays her down and covers up all that wonderful exposed skin of her legs with a blanket before returning to the living room to spend a very long, lonely night with his dreams on the couch.

**A/N. I have no idea why this chapter is three times the length of the others. I wrote it at three in the morning though, so that might have something to do with it. **


	4. Chapter 4

_Chapter Four_

If Eames had known her partner a little less she might have expected things to be awkward between them in the morning, once she wakes up with a most assuredly alcohol-induced headache and remembers trying to seduce him. But she does know him, so she knows he won't give any indication that anything had happened last night.

She also sees him watching her when he doesn't think she's looking, sees the look in his eyes that both touches her and makes her a little uneasy—such pure desperate _need_. But every time, as soon as he catches her watching him, he'll give her his best quick hey-partner smile and drop his gaze back down to his desk or the suspect or the floor or whatever else he can latch his eyes on to that isn't her.

Ross takes their case away from them, of course. Right after they get back to the squad room after interrogating yet another dead end suspect. He coats it under the explanation that Wheeler and her new partner need a good hard case to sink their teeth into, to get used to each others rhythms (Eames catches Bobby looking at her at that). But the fact remains that they are off, unsuitable for detective work at the moment, so Ross gives them the rest of the week to catch up on their paperwork, to field phone calls and write up reports and basically sit at their desks until they atrophy, until the weekend can pass through and apparently be the panacea for all their problems.

Eames leaves the captain's office with the words _Start fresh on Monday_ still ringing in her ears, feeling more naked and exposed for having lost a case than she did standing naked in front of Bobby last night. She watches Wheeler tug her new partner along out the door, Nichols bumbling after her, and she thinks that they were like that in the beginning, her and Goren, slightly more coordinated and untouchable and separate into themselves but still having to figure out how to work with each other, how to accept all the quirks and cadences and _qualities _of each other and put them to good detective use without really getting personally involved, what with Goren's slew of trusting issues and all his personal problems and her still mourning (trying not to mourn) Joe and being just a little uneasy of getting too close to this ancient childish _brilliant _stack of neuroses.

And look at them now, nearly nine years later, still trying to figure out how to work with each other without getting personally involved, even though she thinks she's far past that boundary. After last night she suspects he passed it too, a long time ago.

She can't find the energy for her paperwork so she spends most of the afternoon staring at her computer screen, ostensibly doing very important research even though she hasn't typed anything or moved the mouse in at least an hour. Bobby notices, of course, she'd be willing to put her house up against the fact that he's trying to figure out what she's doing. If he asked she'd tell him the truth, that she's remembering last night, pulling out the memory and all the sensations and feeling and words and examining them, but he doesn't ask, so she doesn't explain.

"Coffee?" he asks her, breaking her free out of her mind. "I think I'll run to Starbucks—get us some decent brew for once."

"No thanks," she says, swiveling around and watching him stand up and crack his knuckles and search for his jacket. So much movement. "I think I'll stick to vodka." She says this just to see his reaction, so she feels—satisfied?—when he chokes on the air and blushes—_blushes_—and hurries off out of the squad room.

At ten past six she goes home with him, wordlessly. She remembers to pull her spare set of clothes out of her locker. Although she half-enjoys being wrapped up in one of Goren's old collared shirts underneath yesterday's jacket, she's pretty sure Ross' eyes zoomed in on it as soon as she saw him. He's never seen Goren wear this shirt, but although it's smaller than the t-shirt she wore to bed last night she's still drowning in it, she can feel all the extra cloth bunched around her back, and it's quite a difference from her normal fitted tops.

In the elevator Goren starts humming the tune to a song she can't quite remember.

"I was thinking Italian tonight," Eames says, even though she wasn't really thinking anything at all.

"Takeout or restaurant?"

She can't decide. Her mind freezes, blocks, stumbles, because although she really couldn't care less where they ate or if they even ate at all, it's so unimportant that it _becomes _important once she focuses on it.

He starts humming again.

She leaves the question of dinner for later and goes back to trying to decide how she feels about going home with him, again. She hasn't been in her house for days now.

It doesn't feel weird. It doesn't feel quite natural, either, but it feels right, so for once she obeys her personal instincts and decides to let this be one decision she just doesn't question.

The tune he's humming softens, sweetens. Fades into a complex first line overlapping into the next and the next, chords smashing and settling and sweeping down into harsh staccato beats of something gentler.

"You okay?" Bobby, looking over at her and asking (what a role reversal).

She doesn't answer but takes his hand, and he laces his fingers through hers. A quick stabbing moment of peace and then the elevator doors open and they drop hands and make their way out to Eames' car.

They are almost at his apartment when he says quietly, "I hope you're not just doing this out of pity."

Eames takes her eyes off the road long enough to glance over at him. He keeps his face towards the window, dead still save for his long fingers picking nervously at the edge of his binder. "Doing what, exactly? The staying over with you, the driving, the nakedness…help me out here, Bobby."

"All of it. Any of it. I…" he rubs his face agitatedly. "I hope you're here because you want to be, not because you feel bad for me."

"I cannot believe you would think that." Oh, but she can. "I'm here because you are my partner, and my friend." And… "And I want to be here."

He takes his eyes of the window long enough to give her a quick searching glance before turning away again. He's not convinced, she knows. But she can't tell him anything else, because hello, she pressed up against him naked last night and he turned her down. Even his kiss was only a diversion to break away from her, even though she felt it in her toes and she could feel his body in front of hers trembling and pulsing away. And yet he didn't let it go any further because they are _partners_, Eames, and this can't happen.

So why is she here? Why is she waiting beside him while he unlocks his door and flicks the lights on and takes her bag to put it inside the bedroom? While he emerges from his bedroom empty handed and de-suited, dressed in jeans and a thick corduroy shirt? Hope? She's too old for hope. She was raised to believe that if you want something you work for it, but if it's clear that it's unobtainable then you simply change your desires, easy as flipping the television channel.

And she's tried that. But she's starting to think that she only _gets_ one station anymore, that instead of the History Channel and MTV and the networks she gets one of the little known channels on satellite packages, a channel that's brilliant, that makes you think, that discourses a little bit of news and information and music and stories on a level that's both interesting and just a little strange, but no one ever watches. Everyone else is too busy with basic cable and reruns and CNN. And she tried those, but once she saw this channel and had it on in the background for a while she discovered she couldn't turn it off.

"Have you decided yet?"

She starts and turns to find Bobby watching her. "I'm sorry?"

"About dinner. Do you want to go out or stay in?"

_This _decision, again. She finds she still can't make up her mind so she stares instead at the spot on the floor by the door where the majority of the vodka bottle had landed last night.

What _was _that song he was humming in the elevator?

"Eames? If it's, uh, all right with you, I'd rather just stay in. I don't really want to have to go out there"—he gestures vaguely out the window to the streets of New York—"again tonight."

"That's fine." So they end up ordering in and plowing through a giant calzone together over a game of Scrabble, until Bobby gets a seven letter word (sublime) on a triple word score and Eames gives up. They retire to the couch, full and comfortable, and Bobby turns on a soft jazz cd.

Was it jazz?

No.

They have a couple of minutes of peace, but then Bobby has to wreck it. "So do you want to talk yet?"

No. No, Bobby. So she does the next best thing: she leans over and kisses him, hard, snaking her hand around to the back of his neck. Her heart is thumping under his shirt because right now she's basically laying it all out on the line, and she can't imagine he's going to respond, but if he doesn't then…then she doesn't know what. So she keeps kissing him even though he's frozen until finally he groans deep in his throat and begins kissing her back, his mouth hitting her hard, crushing up against her as if he wants to consume her alive.

"You sure?" he manages to say, trying to pull away and look her in the eyes. He can't take his hands off of her though, or his lips, and so he waits for her answer while his fingers are thrusting through her hair and his lips are dragging up and down her throat.

"Uh-mmm," is the only thing she can say, her own fingers unbuttoning his shirt with quick rapid need.

From there things get desperate, warm clutching _satisfying_ until the memory of last night is erased thoroughly from their minds and they're lying gasping for air entangled in one another on the couch.

"Much better than talking," he says when he can speak again.

Eames nods, her head on his bare chest. "Much." He wraps his arms around her and she kisses him fiercely, briefly, before resting her cheek against his. "I was even sober this time."

***

In the end, right before Eames falls asleep, she ends up asking him what he was humming all day.

"Caring is Creepy," he says, and she can feel him smiling into her neck. "The Shins. I thought you'd know it."

"I did," she murmurs. "I mean I do. I just forgot."

"You were humming it the day we—the day I knew. Five years ago. Knew that—you—that I…more…"

"I know," she murmurs back, smiling a little. "I remember now. Go to sleep."

**A/N. I wrote the music bits into this chapter, then realized at the ending that I would actually have to come up with a song to sort of wrap it up. I think this is the third song I had in, and I'm still not completely satisfied with it (I love the song, but somehow I can't quite see either Goren or Eames humming it), so feel free to substitute a different song in your imaginations. And I'm pretty meh about some of this chapter, so if anyone has any suggestions for improvements let me know. And to cover my ass, legal-wise, I don't own the song or the characters.**


	5. Chapter 5

_Chapter Five_

He can't sleep, even though Eames passed out on his chest long ago. It's not unusual for him, this insomnia, but he was sort of hoping the warm comfort of his partner lying on top of him might lull him into sleep.

But it's two in the morning and he's still awake. And he's trying not to worry, because when he lets himself worry lately he finds that he can't breathe and his heart races and his body shakes, ceaselessly. Probably panic attacks, but he also assumes that maybe he's dying, because lately everyone around him seems to be dying as well. This hasn't bothered him tremendously before, but now that Eames is—whatever Eames is—he'd really like to live, at least until they can do this once more, and then again after that, and again, and again, and so on. So now when he feels his pulse racing it scares him a little because in all the years and years and _years _he spent worrying about if his mind would hold up he never once considered the fact that his body might fail.

So he's trying not to think. He's trying to distract himself by playing with Eames' hair, sliding the silky strands through his fingers and rubbing the soft hollow right behind her ear. It works, for a while. He moves on to her neck, stroking the softness of her skin with the tips of his fingers until she moans once and wakes up.

"Stop fondling me, Bobby," she mumbles, her voice thick and bleary with the memory of sleep. "I am not a cat."

"I had a cat, once," he tells her, focusing on the good parts as he's taught himself (watching the cat learn how to drink, getting tangled in a ball of yarn, chasing leaves in the yard, exposing the softness of her belly when she splayed out in the sun) and not on how his mother poisoned it when she became convinced it was trying to steal her soul.

But Eames has gone back to sleep. Eames, his partner. Who he just slept with. Who he just jeopardized their partnership with. Who he has dragged into his life now, into all his problems and insecurities and fears. Will they be able to continue on as partners after this? They _have _to, he thinks. He still occasionally thinks back to the long days of Eames' maternity leave, where he was forced into a temporary partnership that did not work at all. Nothing clicked. Not like with Eames. And then, before Eames, there was a whole slew of people parading through, trying to work with him but unable to find that connection. So they _have_ to stay partners, because he knows he is too old and damaged to go through the entire process of someone new.

But the rules are there for a reason. And although he's sort of already been breaking them for over four years now by falling for her, this is tangible and clear and real. They slept together (three times). He's admitted, out loud, that he likes her, although he doesn't know if she remembers through the haze of alcohol. And it's not like it's an utterly pointless rule at that, a rule that doesn't matter if it gets broken. He can tell, he _knows_, that he's done things differently in cases because he likes Eames. He couldn't think when she was kidnapped, he very nearly couldn't function because all he kept thinking was _EamesEamesEamesEamesEames_Eames_Eames_ and if it hadn't been for Ross and the other cops they might not have—anyway. They did. They _did_, he tells himself, and he wraps his arms around her, holding her as evidence.

Is it worth it, he wonders. To have Eames as—this—but to lose her in the work. Or, conversely, to have her as his partner but unable to return to this again. He can't decide. He feels the weight of his indecision scraping away at him, bending and bowing all his thoughts and ideas and fears into one giant ball of panic, ripping away his oxygen and unbalancing his heart and claustrophobafying him until he has to get Eames off of him just so he can breathe.

"Bobby? What the hell are you doing?" Eames sounds very much awake and concerned now as he slides himself out from under her and stands up, his legs weak and trembling so he has to sit back down on the edge of the couch. "What's wrong?"

"My heart's racing." He tries to keep his voice calm because on some intellectual level he _knows _it's just a panic attack, but his body is physically responding to something that should be mental and maybe it's _not_, maybe, in some cruel and freakish coincidence, his body has decided to pack it in just when he's beginning to get things together with Eames (oh God his _partner_).

Eames sits up beside him, sweeping her hair out of her face worriedly and pressing her fingers to the pulse in his throat. "One thirty. Average is seventy to one hundred?"

"Sixty to one hundred." He's sweating now, hot and cold and clammy. "Eames."

"Stay calm, Bobby." She presses her hand flat against the left side of his chest and bends her head towards him, her eyes focusing on her hand. "Chest pain?"

"No, I just…I can't breathe. I feel…" he swallows. "Like I'm drowning. Like…I'm outside of my body."

"Give it a minute. Try to relax." She keeps her hand against his heart but lifts her eyes to his, trying to steady him. "You're shaking."

"I can't stop."

"Are you sure you don't have any chest pain? Any tingling? Numbness?"

"No." His voice is thick. "I can feel my heart beating all through my body. I can hear it. Do you hear it?"

Eames presses her ear to his neck where her fingers were and she listens for a minute. "I can feel it, but I don't hear anything." He nods and she lifts her head, looking at him closely. "You're pale. Are you dizzy?"

"Sort of. Like I'm going to fall. Everything's sliding together."

She nods and takes his pulse again. "One twenty-four." She stares at him for a second, her face forced into calmness. "I think we should go to the hospital. Just in case." He doesn't want to, not really, but he nods.

The lights are still out so Eames has to fumble around in the darkness for everything, because he's afraid he's going to fall if he gets up and she can move faster anyway. She slides her shirt on, buttoning it up wrong so one shirt tail hangs lower than the other but she just stuffs the excess material in the pants she wore to work and then she's ready to go. He's mostly still dressed, he just needs closed and buttoned and adjusted, which he manages to do with trembling hands.

There is nothing quite like a late night trip to the emergency room, he finds himself thinking as Eames helps him stand up and he leans on her heavily. She gives him a quick squeeze around the waist and they stagger off down the stairs and into her car. There's all the sights and sounds and smells you only associate with hospitals and medicine and fear. Antibacterial solution. Sweat. Worry. The particularly harsh Day-Glo glare of the florescent lights reflecting off the easily sterilized Emergency Room floor.

Getting in the ER is awkward too, because although he's been here a couple of times before (once when he got into a bar fight and got kicked in the chest, once when he punched a concrete wall and broke his hand after spending a Sunday afternoon with his mother) he's never had anyone along with him. Especially not someone as direct and take-charge as Eames—she makes him go sit down in the waiting room while she checks him in at the reception desk and then takes the paperwork right out of his hands, filling it out with only minimal help from him.

She glances over at him every three seconds, randomly pressing her fingers to his neck and counting under her breath, apparently oblivious to the eyes of the other people in the ER. Lots of eyes. It is packed, which he finds odd considering that it's now 3 AM on a Thursday morning, but nearly every seat is filled with groggy sick people and their families.

"How do you feel now?"

"Better." Ridiculous, because even though his heart's still thumping and he's still shaking, he doesn't feel like he's out drunk on a boat in a storm anymore, yet here they are at the hospital.

"Your pulse is still fast. One sixteen." She gazes at him with that worried look he's come to know so well, her eyes compassionate, her lips pressed together, faint lines crinkling at her eyelids.

"It's probably nothing. Stress."

She takes his hand and they wait together until a harried nurse yells his name and he stands up.

"Do you want me to wait out here or come back with you?" Eames asks. He pauses, trying to decide, but then the nurse yells his name again impatiently and he nods quickly.

"Stay with me."

So she does.

They go through the preliminaries with the nurse (height weight symptoms blood pressure pulse rate), and then she leaves them alone with orders for him to change into a gown and the assurance that she'll be back to suck some blood out of him in a few minutes.

Eames helps him change into the gown. He feels like a child in her small chilly hands, like he's four again and he needs help getting his pants on the right way, but for once he doesn't fight it. He needs her. He could probably have managed to get into the gown himself, it's not that, but something far more mental/emotional, far more base. He takes her hand and pulls her down to the edge of the gurney beside him, leaning against her as she puts her arms around his shoulders.

"All right, still?" she asks.

He nods and slips his hand around to her back so he can feel the rise and fall of her breathing. "Are you sure you want to get involved in all this?" he murmurs. "All…my problems?"

"I am already," she whispers back, kissing his unshaven cheek.

"It's not too late to back out." He sucks in an uneven breath and feels his heart begin to thump again. "I mean, I don't know, exactly—we never said what we _were_—doing, or…" Eames presses her hand against his chest again as he continues. "I don't really know what happened or anything—God, I'm rambling here—but don't feel like you_ have _to stay, that you…owe it to me or anything, I don't want that, I don't want you to feel—"

She cuts him off. "Bobby, shhh. Your heart's racing again. This isn't exactly the place for this discussion."

He's getting dizzy. "I know. But it had to be said."

"Okay. It's okay. Why don't you lay down now?" she suggests, slipping out of his hands and nudging him down on to his back. He closes his eyes to block out the sight of her drenched in the material of his shirt, the folds of fabric in harsh contrast to the fine-boned features of her face and the thin swish of her hair. "I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't want to," she adds, and so he hangs on to that until the nurse comes back in with more questions and needles and monitors to hook him up to.

He has an EKG, a chest x-ray, an MRI of his head ("This disorientation is worrisome," the doctor tells him), bloodwork, and finally a thorough interrogation into his mental status.

"Feeling especially worried?" the doctor asks, clipboard in hand, his eyes probing Goren's. "Anything particularly stressful happen lately?"

In the corner Eames laughs abruptly, then looks sheepish when both he and the doctor look over at her. "Sorry."

"Yeah." He doesn't elaborate, other than to say, "It's possible it could be stress. There's…been a lot going on lately."

"Your heart rate was a little higher than normal, but the medication brought it down and it's steady, now. The other tests didn't show any abnormalities, so I'd say you probably did have a panic attack, but just to be safe we're going to keep you overnight for observation. Just in case. In two hours we're going to take some more blood, and then in the morning you'll have another EKG. I want you to have a stress test, too." The doctor surveys him for a moment, then looks over at Eames. "Do either of you have any questions?"

"If his other tests are normal, can he go home tomorrow?" Eames asks.

"I think so. If we rule that it is a panic attack then there are different courses of medication we can try, therapy, the whole bit. But he should be able to go home in the afternoon, if nothing turns up in the tests."

Eames nods. "Okay. Thank you, doctor."

Goren nods his thanks too, and then they are left alone together again.

"Good news," Eames says softly, but he can't look at her.

"Yeah."

***

It starts raining again at four in the morning. They're both still awake, thinking about tachycardia. Arrhythmias. Cardiomiopathy. Schizophrenia and beta blockers and congestive heart failure, partnership and loyalty and togetherness and touch feel comfort hurt sickness health death parting.

Lots of thought.

Few words.

Just them together on the bed, surrounded by wires and beeping machines and doctors and nurses who don't see them as anything other than a couple worrying over a blip in the night.

**A/N. I tried to keep the medical stuff pretty close to reality, but the closest I am to the medical world is my part time pharmacy tech job so there's room for error. It's pretty close to my own panic attack/ER visit though (minus the Eames being there part, obv.), so I'm hoping it's realistic.**


	6. Chapter 6

_Chapter Six_

Goren calls in sick first, and Eames thinks that Ross sounds suspicious when she calls half an hour later. _Yes, well, we spend so much time together _on the job _that it's not unheard of that they'd both come down with the exact same bug_. At least, that's what she tells Ross. Maybe he buys it, maybe he doesn't, but after the night she just had she doesn't really care.

"I wonder it'll storm again soon," she says just to hear something other than the faint beeps of the heart monitor he's hooked up to.

"Mmm," is his response, and she can't blame him, really, because it's not that she cares about thunder or wind but that she needs to snap him out of this fugue back into how he was before the panic attack—stroking her hair, stroking her everywhere, kissing her neck, her wrists, her shoulders, gratefulness and desire and ease in his eyes, his breath hot against hers, laughing, even, when she accidentally elbowed him—and she doesn't know how to get back to that in all this silence. He's ashamed, she supposes. Embarrassed. Afraid that maybe this is the first step in a long drowning slope into mental illness.

"This happens sometimes," she says softly. "After Jo…"

"I remember. I know."

"This doesn't mean anything."

He is silent.

"Bobby. It _doesn't_. Lots and lots of people have panic attacks."

"Lots of people have schizophrenia, too," he says softly, so softly. "Just because something is common doesn't mean that it's good, or okay."

She wants to say something else, but she can't find the words and then a nurse comes in and rolls him away for another EKG.

The rest of his tests are normal, so in the afternoon they send him home with a prescription for anti-depressants he will not take and the number for a therapist he will not call. It's not that he has anything in particular against them, she thinks, it's that he's still sick of that whole entire world he went through with his mother—lithium risperidone bupropion suprasadome citalopram sertraline fluoxetine mirtazapine quetiapine temezepam paroxetine trazodone venlafaxine perphenazine olanzapine clozapine SSRIs MAOIs extended release tablets slow acting capsules one four five hundred milligrams sig 4x daily when needed take with food on an empty stomach at bedtime no refills remaining side effects may include dizzinessnauseavomitingsuicidalimpulses psychiatric sessions the Freudian motherfucking _couch _late night calls the doctors aren't trying to kill you I'm really going to do it this time you'll be sorry why won't you take your _meds_, Ma?—and he doesn't want to inhabit that himself.

"I'm going to go to sleep for a while," he says as soon as she pulls back into the parking lot to his apartment. "I'll…I'll call you later." _Ah. Here, finally, is the brush-off_. "Thanks for taking me."

He gets out of the car without looking back as she drives away. So she goes back to her house (with the _key_ this time), her house that has the beginning atmosphere of neglect, of coldness and un-habitation and solitude.

Quiet.

So quiet.

Quite.

She gets a shower and changes the sheets on her bed and throws a load of laundry in, noting the look of his shirts mingling with hers in the washer but reserving judgment (it looks so _right_/it looks so _wrong_) because maybe not everything is that clear, or easy.

Partners?

Lovers?

Are they even _friends_?

Too many questions, too many important thoughts to be had and decisions to be made, and so she goes to sleep. Long, deep, dreamless sleep, curled up on her side with her knees drawn up under the mounds and dips and valleys of her masses of blankets—the quilt her sister made for her when she was pregnant and always cold, the comforter she bought to replace the one she had shared with Joe, the soft fleece they wrapped her nephew in for the first time at the hospital. Other blankets too, just because blankets, Christmas presents from family members who hadn't a clue what to get her so what the hell, everyone needs blankets, right?, and the afghan she bought one blustery winter stakeout because she was so fucking cold and so was he and so they huddled under it, each painfully aware of the other's body but not touching and not talking and just trying to get warm again.

Is she warm now?

Maybe.

She's certainly sweating. Maybe she should kick some of these covers off but then she's asleep so it's too late, and when she wakes up ten hours later she's hot and clammy with a sliding nauseous sheen in the back of her throat and she needs another shower and it's the middle of the night and he hasn't called.

She goes back to sleep.

Morning.

Work or no?

No.

Will he…

Probably not.

Should she…

No.

_Be comfortable in your decisions_, she thinks slightly hysterically, remembering when her mom told her that when she was still debating marrying Joe two months before the wedding. Not that she didn't love him—she did, a lot—but… Doubt. Always, always, doubt. Doubt in everything. Go to college? Become a cop? Major Case? Get married? Children of her own? Be a surrogate? Partner with the unstable legend? And then: Become friends? Get close? Get involved? Sleep with him? Again?

She's still undecided on the last few. She can _feel _her indecision, an amorphous blob crawling, sucking at her as she wavers on the lip of this chasm of what _could happen _and what _might happen _and maybe even what she_ wants to happen_. This impenetrable abyss of _she doesn't know_. This _blockade_. Sometime in the future, she supposes, she'll come to a decision, unless she can't, unless she continues on like the last nine years, safe from the sidelines, safe in her distance, but not exactly happy, and not exactly positive.

Sleep, again.

When she wakes up she feels drunk on too much REM, far drunker than vodka smashing key fucking _gone _nakedness rejection but not really. She feels like she's being consumed by her bed, by her blankets. By her past. And her present, and the glorious unimaginable future.

***

Sometime after she's gone back to sleep her phone starts vibrating in her ear. She slaps around on her nightstand, trying to lay her hand on her alarm and then, once she finds it, trying to turn it off.

It _is _off.

It's her phone that's buzzing, but by the time she realizes this it's already gone to voicemail. She waits 37 seconds and then checks.

One missed call.

No messages.


	7. Chapter 7

**For Daystar Searcher--because she asked so nicely :)**

_Chapter Seven_

She decides to wait it out. Not because she wants to play games or gain the upper hand or make him sweat, but because she thinks that it's best not to push it just yet. She could be wrong, she admits. Maybe she should be banging on his door and demanding that he talk and assuring him that he is not alone, but really, she's just trying to do what she thinks is best for him, and for her.

So she has orange juice and fruit for breakfast at eleven in the morning, dusts and then reads for an hour, and then goes in to work.

"I felt better," she explains to Ross when he comes out of his office and stops dead in his tracks, seeing her at her desk.

"So did your partner." Ross nods at Goren standing at the copier. "Must be some hell of an odd bug going around."

"Must be." She can't laugh. She _won't _laugh.

She laughs.

Ross looks at her strangely but says only, "Try not to infect the entire squad room, Detective. I don't need _all _of my detectives out on sick leave."

"Will do. Try, I mean. Will try. I'll try not to," she continues, semi-aware of the fact that she's rambling but not exactly caring. "I'll try not to make everyone else sick," she finishes.

"Get some coffee in you, Eames," Ross says, watching her carefully. "And then get to work."

"Right." She gives him a smile and watches him walk away, shaking his head.

Bobby walks over to her (of course he was listening, he's always listening, probing, searching for more, for answers, for peace).

"You sound odd."

"I feel odd."

And there's that.

The hours slide into each other, syrupy and indistinguishable except for the diminishing stack of papers on their desks and the general abandonment of the squad room by all the other cops with a functioning life outside of their job and their partners.

At roughly ten o'clock Bobby begins to look tired and irritable, red rimmed eyes, yawns that make his shoulders shake. _Not sleeping_, she thinks. Rather: _He hasn't slept_.

She keeps working.

Midnight.

Empty squad room, save for the two. Heads bent over desks, bleary eyes on fuzzy computer screens, cold and numb and stiff and sick and still here.

"I think I'm going to go." His voice, thick and raspy from disuse, startles her in the silence.

"Okay."

He shuts his computer down, flips his portfolio closed, grabs his jacket. Stands still and stares at her.

"What?"

"Do…you want to come with me?" he asks softly. So softly.

She does.

Empty squad room.

***

The night slides into day into night next week next month. There are more panic attacks. More stillness and fear in the night. More vodka. More hands on backs on breasts fisted in hair. More harsh breathing and aching and arching and tasting. More entanglement. Another case, slow at first, but then they plunge into it with the fervor that they can't control, the enthusiasm of _having a case _and _working _and _clicking_. Another confession, another solve. Another night spent together and another, until he clears some space for her and she moves some of her clothes to his place because she can't keep going to work in his old shirts, but they don't talk about it.

So, in the end, she doesn't consciously make any decision at all. She just keeps going, keeps feeling her way in this unexpectedly familiar but scary territory. They develop their own rhythms, and this beat, this song, this time, it works.

_~~Complete~~_


End file.
